Argerich Schumann

This box of Schumann's chamber works makes a superb package, and is often available at bargain price. It is a bit like one of Martha Argerich's box sets from Lugano, except that here she is present in a large number of the formations. All of the works where she features, including the Piano Quintet, the 2nd Violin Sonata and the Marchenbilder, are unmissable and full of passion and excitement, conveying a continuous sense of transport. Where she is not the pianist Alexandre Rabinovitch takes over at the keyboard and also gives us some superlative versions.

The Beethoven Triple Concerto is a strange work, with the most important–-or at least prominent–-solos given to the cello; it is the instrument which introduces each movement. The remarkable Martha Argerich wisely allows Mischa Maisky to shine in his solos and leading position, but her contribution is anything but back seat. Her customary virtuosity is everywhere in evidence, and, in a way, she turns the piano into the spinal column of the work, with the violin and cello playing around her. Every time Maisky is about to lapse into a mannerism which might detract–-too much sliding, a dynamic slightly exaggerated–-Argerich brings him back, and both of them play with handsome tone. Capucon's violin is recorded a bit stridently (this was taped live in Lugano), but his playing is equally stunning. Alexandre Rabinovitch-Barakovsky leads the orchestra matter-of-factly until the final movement, when he catches the proper fire. In the Schumann A minor concerto Argerich is wonderful the solo passages and a fine partner in orchestrated ones and she really makes much of both the lyrical runs and the dance-like passages in the last movement. Recommended.

The TDK DVD is designed as a showcase for Martha Argerich, recorded live at La Rogue d’Anthéon Piano Festival, but although she dazzles in the coupled Prokofiev, she is very much part of a team in the Beethoven Triple Concerto and indeed in the expressive slow movement it is the cellist Gautier Capuçon whose solo remains in the memory. Alexandre Rabinovitch-Barakovsky, his hair flying, energetically directs vital accounts of the outer movements, with a spontaneous accelerando at the very end of the work…the camera involves the listener compellingly inside the music-making.

In 1823 Johann Georg Stauffer invented the arpeggione, a freak instrument, a hybrid of 'cello and guitar, with strings tuned in fourths. Schubert invested such attractive melodies in this queer contraption, he must have believed in its future. The melodies that float throughout the "Sonata for Arpeggione", are indeed attractive to say the least. The first point that strikes one in this performance is the clarity that cellist Mischa Maisky maintains.